An Odyssey: Rinshin's Tales
by rabmudtz
Summary: A young fire-nation prince is witness to the last tale of a dying master, the odyssey to a home that is no more. A journey of hatred, horror and friendship that lasts beyond time. Rated "M" for planned content in later chapters.
1. Empty ruins

The clouds hung low, and almost touched the ceiling of the ruin. The majestic stone had since long been overgrown by weeds, the pale oxidized copper roof had fallen in at some places and only a few spiders lived in the towers. The courtyard was dead, as grey as the sky. Up here in the mountains, there was no life apart from the occasional insect, even the sparrows had abandoned the complex.

It was in this crumbling, stony ruin that the old man sat. Wrapped in a weathered cloak, motionless, looking as beaten as the stone wall he was sitting beneath, crumbling under time and burdens unseen. Yet he sat there, still present in the world, as were the ancient walls and towers, courtyards and pillars of the once majestic temple. Meanwhile, a younger man approached him, carrying a bundle of firewood. He walked up to the old man and lay down the firewood on the ground in front of the man.

The old man turned, looking with sad eyes upon the small branches, taken from trees that had died in an era long past. The younger man quietly summoned a flame in the palm of his hand and gently placed it on the black branches, holding out his freezing hands close to the flames that sparked to life with a vibrant crackling.

"How are you feeling, master?" If there had been any observers, they would have noticed the reverence and respect with which the young man spoke to his elder. They would have noticed the younger man was somewhere in his mid-twenties, powerfully built and with a short beard and rather large side-burns. His raven-black hair was long and tied up in a knot, with a golden artefact shaped like a flame holding it in place. The observer would also have noticed that he carried himself proudly, knowing it was his place to be served, as he had been all his life. Still he spoke with such humility to the old man.

In fact, the "old" man was more than old, he was ancient. His face was lined by an era of laughs, tears and smiles. Scars he had aplenty. He could feel death approaching with arms wide open, yet he remained as calm as the depths of the ocean, he had nothing left to fear, he had seen it all. The observer would notice how he sat wrapped in that thin, filthy cloak, seemingly not feeling the cold, even as the stronger, younger man beside him shivered in the air that caused small water pools in the cracked stone floors to freeze solid. And the observer might then realize who these men where, the men who were the last carriers of that ancient code. But there was no observer, for none apart from the two men had been there for over a century.

The younger man sat down opposite to the older man, repeating his question, "How are you feeling?". This time, the older man raised his head and solemnly said, "How I feel? I feel… More alive than I have done in many decades, to be truthful. But it won't be long now until I'll have to leave.". The young man frowned at this, the pair of them had had the discussion before. "I've said it before master, you can't leave me now, without you I'd be left alone again, I wouldn't know where to go!"

The old man closed his eyes, then opened them, looking straight into the eyes of the younger, who felt a shiver run up his spine from the intense gaze. "Yes, you will. You will get lost again, Iroh, but one day you will remember my teachings and you will become a greater man than I have ever been." And without giving him time to respond, he continued, "I do have something more to tell you, parts of the story which you haven't heard, parts of the story that I want to tell, the whole story, before I leave."

The younger man seemed to silently nod to himself, crossing his legs and settling down, the tale certainly would not be a short one. That was good, he didn't want to hear a simplified story.

The old man pulled out a worn fabric pouch and gently stuck his hand inside, pulling out a fine brown powder which he slowly strew over the fire. A comforting smell of warm tree bark filled the air, and the two men started drifting off into their minds.

The young man who had been called Iroh felt his breathing grow deeper, and his mind found a profound calm. He was inside his head, with a veil between him and the real world. The darkness around him was that of comforting emptiness. He heard took another deep breath and awaited his teacher. Soon enough his teacher appeared before his mind's eye, shrouded in a cloak of white light. He held out a small pearl of shimmering blue, pink and green that shifted between the colours. The colourful light expanding, growing until it was all he could see. When the light was so bright he thought it would leave him blind, he felt himself losing all sense of self-awareness, becoming one with the luminosity, his consciousness leaving his body in the stone ruins to visit a time from where there had been but a single survivor.


	2. Disrupted daydreams

At the heart of the northern-most mountain range of the world, where the snow lies thick and silent in winter, wet and heavy during spring and autumn and only gives way to dryer and warmer weather in mid-summer, was the Northern Air Temple. Built upon sharp, icy mountains, its grand towers reached towards the sky, almost cutting it with the shining-red, copper roofs that shown like small suns on a fine day.

In the skies impossibly large birds would fly, soaring on certain warm updrafts which carried them high into the heavens, allowing them to soar above the rest of the world as free as the wind. On sunny, summer days the mountains would emanate life and energy as the animals were out foraging for their growing young in the lush valleys that bloomed in the brief summer heat as aspiring airbenders would imitate the birds and sky bison, soaring in the skies.

Today, however, was not a sunny day. It was a rugged, rainy and in all ways nasty spring evening. My name is Rinshin, and at the moment I'm hurrying to get down from the skies with my glider and out of the freezing rain that's been falling all day and has soaked my junior monks' robes and penetrated to my skin. I've spent the day with the approximate dozen or so kids my age at the Air Temple, all of us attempting to control our gliders in the ridiculously strong air currents and immense downpour as we flew the route that had been laid out by our teacher Joben, a relatively young but incredibly stubborn monk. Somewhere around noon though, even he had decided that the conditions were too bad to practise in and we had headed home to the Air Temple.

My sight was limited to merely a few meters in the heavy rain, but I'd been practising gliding since I was ten years old, and six years of experience had left me with an immaculate mid-map of the mountains closest to the towers and spires of the Air Temple, so I was able to navigate my way through the icy rain down to the landing area. I slowed in and closed my glider, my tough boots making contact with the hard stone and I heard the others landing. Not waiting for our teacher, we hurried to the dry spot underneath a wooden construction, where birds would rest from the strong summer sun.

Our teacher Joben landed last and walked, without minding the rain, over to where we were standing, dripping and soaked to the skin, shivering in the cold wind. "Today we've felt what it's like to fly in less than favourable conditions, which is what you will sometimes have to do." The group let out a groan, but Joben continued, "However, seeing as our lesson has been cut short by the weather spirits, we shall have to extend our next gliding session by a few hours. Now, off you go!"

I followed the group through the nearest wooden doorway, towards the stairs that lead to our rooms. A shorter boy hurried up next to me, "W-we-well th-that was g-great." My friend Joben was usually sarcastic, and as a result most of the kids didn't bother hanging around too long around him, I didn't mind it though.

"Yeah, Joben is more stubborn than a turtle-mule, I mean, how hard would it have been to let us off for one day?" Lobsang hadn't been a fully initiated monk for many years, but he expected every junior monk to show the same mental and physical perseverance as an older one. And although he never really expressed it, I felt like he always thought he was much smarter than everybody else.I'd never liked the guy.

"Maybe, but he's still a pretty good flyer, even the the teachers at the other Air Temples see him as one of the best."

"If only that could extend to his teaching." Lobsang smiled at my negativity, he had always been a more understanding person than me.

We reached the staircase that lead to our rooms, and walked down the corridor, one of the few with wooden floors in the Air Temple. Every uninitiated monk had his own room, which was chosen randomly for him or her in a long stone building after birth. This lead to that the kids formed social groups without age as a boundary. The result was that the older kids were seen as attainable role models for the younger children, giving them a feeling of responsibility as an unofficial mentor. The younger children in turn helped the older kids in keeping a happier, and more care-free attitude as they grew up.

Lobsang was only a year older than me, and had been one of my best friends since the autumn I was four, when we had tried to annoy older girls with leaves that we airbended to fly into their faces. They had laughed and in turn airbended a whole pile of freshly-fallen leaves to fly in our faces. Our rooms were next to each other as well, and as kids we had found a small hole in the wall which we'd talked to watch other to. Nowadays it was mostly used by either of us to send a howling wind through the others room in the middle of the night.

We reached my door first, "See you later, man." I said and Lobsang replied, "Yeah, at dinner, then Dharma, I can barely wait."

I sighed and entered my room, closing the wood of dark wood behind me. Despite Lobsang's sarcastic enthusiasm, he did enjoy Dharma, which was basically Airbender spirituality. He did more than enjoy it though, he understood and agreed with it. I had always had problems with realizing any more than the basic points of my people's traditional philosophy. I lay down on my basic bed, a stone base with a straw mattress and two dark blue blankets, no pillow. I sighed, and wondered why I couldn't have been born an Earth bender instead. My mind slowly drifted off into a daydream, where I was an Earthbender, son of a nobleman that was lord over a wealthy town somewhere in a warmer part of the Earth Kingdom. I'd dress fancily and be greeted by every townsman when I walked through town. I'd have a large house with more than just two blankets as a cover and have more than one robe that I would have servants wash for me.

When I grew older I'd join the army and become a high-ranking officer, wearing an impressive black uniform with golden buttons and a dark green cloak. The floor creaked loudly and I sighed, brought back to reality. I knew and had been told several times by the monks that every person would at some point dream about fame and glory, but that the attachment to such a future would only lead to grief. I wasn't convinced. I had several times thought of running away, and if I had had any relatives in the Earth Kingdom, maybe I would. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy life here in the Air Temple, I loved air bending and my friends, but I did feel that I was meant for something far greater than merely becoming a monk and wasting away my life in one of four secluded Temples, never making a mark on the world.

I sighed again, daydreaming wouldn't make me any happier, that was something which I actually remembered from the monks' lessons. Then a fierce gust of wind howled through my room and I bolted upright from my position on the the bed, caught unaware by Lobsang's sneaky attack. A moment later there was a knock on the door and it started to swing upon. I quickly decided to make my revenge swift and decisive. I sent a massive ball of spinning air straight at Lobsang as he opened the door and he was knocked back into the wall of the corridor, giving off a startled cry at the unexpected attack.

Only that it wasn't Lobsang. It was instead one of the senior monks, who sometimes came down here to remind the juniors of lessons of tasks that needed to be done. The old monk was sitting against the stone wall, his eyes wide open and his usually well-kept, grey beard sprawling in every direction.

"HAHA-HWAHAHAHWA!"

From close by came the sound of uncontrollable laughter and when I stepped into the corridor I saw Lobsang gasping for breath in between his fits of laughter. Realizing I had somehow been fooled by my friend, I smiled, then chuckled a little, eventually joining in and laughing uncontrollably, feeling my face turn red. Even the startled, old monk failed to suppress a grin, and stood up, brushed off his robes and we were sent off laughing towards Dharma.


End file.
